Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.

I’ve shared the full letter below, but want to share my thoughts on Bezos’ four themes he shares for avoiding Day 2:

True Customer Obsession: Obviously this theme completely resonates with me. I love the line… “Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf.” My take: Companies need to look for the unchartered white space, and innovate at the intersection between customers’ latent needs and emerging capabilities.

Resist Proxies: Bezos calls out “process” and “surveys” as proxies to watch out for. Process is an issue because it can reinforce compliance and complacency, instead of empowering individuals to drive innovation. Surveys are an issue, because they can provide employees with a superficial understanding of customers. Deep insights into what people like, love, and dream about aren’t fully answered with percentage points. My take: You need to create deep customer empathy, not just statistically significant charts and metrics. Find ways to include more qualitative research.

Embrace External Trends: Amazon will likely be more adept at grabbing the “tailwinds” of trends than most companies, but it’s critical for all leadership teams to keep an eye on how the world is changing. That’s why we issue our annual listing of CX trends. I was also very intrigued by Bezos’ discussion about easy access to Amazon’s “deep learning frameworks.” An API that taps into Amazon’s rich analytics backbone could be much more exciting than even IBM’s Watson. My take: Every organization should identify a set of key trends and ask the question: “How will these put us out of business or help us to create even more value to customers?”

High-Velocity Decision Making. Bezos discusses three elements of his leadership philosophy. First of all, treat many decisions as reversible, so that you are creating an option — not just putting all your chips on a single approach. Second, is to get comfortable with making decisions without full information. Thirdly, he talks about “disagree and commit” which means that everyone needs to get in line when a decision has been made. Finally, he wants true misalignment to be identified and dealt with immediately. Nothing kills a culture more than lingering, unaddressed issues. My take: It’s smarter to get moving and learn along the way (see my post Modernize Leadership: Learn and Adjust).

The bottom line: Every leadership team should proactively avoid Day 2.

We recently released the 2017 Temkin Experience Ratings that ranks the customer experience of 331 companies across 20 industries based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

Ace Hardware, BJ’s Wholesale Club, and QVC deliver the best customer experience in the retail industry, according to the 2017 Temkin Experience Ratings.

Ace, BJ’s, and QVC all tied for the top spot out of the 48 retailers included in this year’s ratings, each earning a score of 81% and coming in 8th place overall out of 331 companies across 20 industries. Five other retailers received scores that put them in the top 10% of companies for the entire Ratings: Sam’s Club, O’Reilly Auto Parts, True Value, Amazon.com, and Dollar Tree.

We recently released the 2016 Temkin Experience Ratings that ranks the customer experience of 294 companies across 20 industries based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

True Value, Amazon.com, and O’Reilly Auto Parts deliver the best customer experience in the retail industry, according to the 2016 Temkin Experience Ratings, an annual ranking of companies based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

True Value took the top spot with a rating of 78%, placing it 3rd overall out of 294 companies across 20 industries. Furthermore, out of the 46 retailers included in the Ratings, it was the only one to improve its score from last year. Amazon.com and O’Reilly Auto Parts tied for the second spot, each earning a rating of 76% and an overall rank of 9th. QVC and Dollar Tree also made it into the top twenty overall as each received a rating of 75%, which put them both in 12th place.

At the other end of the spectrum, RadioShack was at the bottom of the list for the sixth straight year, earning a rating of 55% and an overall rank of 199th.

Overall, the retail industry averaged a 69% rating in the 2016 Temkin Experience Ratings and came in 3rd place out of 20 industries. The average rating of the retail industry decreased by five percentage-points between 2015 and 2016, dropping from 74% to 69%.

Here are some additional findings from the retail industry: Read More …

We recently released the 2015 Temkin Experience Ratings that ranks the customer experience of 293 companies across 20 industries based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

PetSmart and Amazon.com tied for the top spot, each scoring 82%, which put them both in 4th place overall out of 293 companies across 20 industries. Walgreens came in a close third with a rating of 81% and a ranking of 8th, while Bed Bath & Beyond, Lowe’s, and Costco all earned 79% and tied for 19th place overall.

At the other end of the spectrum, RadioShack was at the bottom of the list for the fifth straight year, earning a rating of 63%. Six other retailers earned Temkin Experience Ratings below 70%: Sears, Gap, Best Buy, GameStop, Kmart, and Foot Locker.

Here are some additional findings:

Retail was one of only five industries to improve its ratings between the 2014 and 2015. The industry average for retailers increased by 1.7 percentage-points.

Overall, the retail industry averaged a 74% rating in the 2015 Temkin Experience Ratings and came in 3rd place out of 20 industries. It was also one of only five industries to improve its rating over the past year, increasing its average by 1.7 percentage points.

True Value (-6 points), Sam’s Club (-5 points), and Best Buy (-5 points) declined the most between 2014 and 2015.

We recently released the 2015 Temkin Experience Ratings that ranks the customer experience of 293 companies across 20 industries based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

Amazon (Kindle) and Apple deliver the best customer experience in the computer and tablet industry, according to the 2015 Temkin Experience Ratings, an annual ranking of companies based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers. Amazon took the top spot with a rating of 76%, placing it 41st overall out of 293 companies. Apple came in second with a rating of 68% and an overall ranking of 119th.

While the Temkin Experience Ratings have included computer makers for five years, it added tablets to this category in 2015. Amazon’s Kindle—a newcomer to the Ratings—unseated Apple as the highest-scoring computer and tablet maker, a position Apple had held for the previous three years.

At the other end of the spectrum, Lenovo and Asus tied for the lowest-rated computer and tablet maker, each with a rating of 55% and an overall ranking of 245th. Lenovo dropped six percentage-points from 2014, while this is the first year that Asus has been included in the Ratings.

Overall, the computer & tablet industry averaged a 63% rating in the 2015 Temkin Experience Ratings and tied for 11th place out of 20 industries. It was also one of only 5 industries to improve its rating over the past year, increasing its average by 1.2 percentage points.

Last week I attended the Arizona State University, Center for Services Leadership (CSL) Compete Through Service Symposium. It was an excellent event. I was impressed by what the CSL is doing to equip future customer service/experience leaders.

One of the speakers was Mike Gathright, Director Americas Customer Services at Amazon.com. He describe Amazon.com as “The Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company,” or just EMC3. It’s no accident that Amazon.com scores so consistently high in the Temkin Experience Ratings and Temkin Customer Service Ratings. The company works on it.

I really love one of the company’s tenets, Relentlessly advocate for customers. It sounds like something that all companies should strive to do.

Gathright explained that Amazon.com has three key priorities:

Empower your people

Listen to customers

Invent for customers

To deliver on those priorities, the company uses a number of internal quality processes including Kaizen (continuous improvement) and Genba walk (seeing and observing the actual process or activity).

One of the quality efforts that I really like is the use of an Andon Cord. This is a concept where any employee can identify a quality problem and halt manufacturing. The implementation at Amazon.com is that any phone agent can pull the Andon cord (not a real cord), which will remove the buy button from all of its sites, immediately stopping the sale of a product. This step kicks off a process for the product team to find and solve the root cause of the problem.

To get the Andon cord going, Amazon.com celebrates its use and analyzes the savings from avoiding quality issues with products sent to customers. The company also built a tool to help associates decide if the situation they are seeing warrants them pulling the Andon cord.

Gathright also discussed the notion of one-way doors and two-way doors in the context of innovation. One-way doors are changes that you can’t undo, while two-way doors are changes that can be undone if they don’t work. He said that Amazon.com goes big and bold through two-way doors.

The company taps into its employees with a Twitter-like tool internally to crowd-source ideas. Employees submit ideas and they get voted up or down based on the likes and dislikes from associates. Gathright also said that the company believes in “hiring the right people and getting out of their way.”

To measure the effectiveness of Amazon.com’s customer service, the company asks a simple question: “Did we solve your problem?” The answer to that question is the only key metric.

When asked about the trade-off between CX and bottom line results, Gathright explained that it’s not “either/or,” it’s more like “both/and.”

Since today is the last day of Customer Service Week, I’m give a shout out to industry leaders in the 2014 Temkin Customer Service Ratings. The chart below shows the leaders across 19 industries, along with where they ranked compared with the 233 companies in the ratings.

We just published the 2014 Temkin Web Experience Ratings, the fourth year of the ratings. It uses feedback from 10,000 U.S. consumers to rate 222 organizations across 19 industries.

Download dataset for $295

USAA’s banking business took the top spot and Capital One 360 (formerly ING Direct) earned the second highest rating in the 2014 Temkin Web Experience Ratings, which rates 222 companies across 19 industries. USAA’s insurance and credit card businesses tied for third place.Rounding out the top 13 companies in the ratings are Charles Schwab, Amazon.com, credit unions, TD Bank, U.S. Bank, Sheraton, Ace Hardware, eBay, and Nordstrom.

The award for delivering the worst web experience goes to Coventry Health Care, followed closely by Medicaid. Four of the bottom 14 organizations are health plans and three are TV service providers. The remaining companies in the bottom 14 of the Temkin Web Experience Ratings are Charter Communications, Comcast (TV service and Internet service), Dunkin’ Donuts, Time Warner Cable (TV service and Internet service), Jack in the Box,CareFirst, MetroPCS, Highmark, Adobe, and Wendy’s.

Here’s how the industries compare with each other:

The 2014 Temkin Web Experience Ratings shows that companies have made improvements in web experience between 2013 and 2014. Led by airlines, which increased by nearly 15 percentage points since last year, 17 of 19 industries improved. The two industries that earned lower ratings in 2014 are parcel delivery services and rental cars.

Six companies saw their Temkin Web Experience Ratings fall by 10 points or more between 2013 and 2014: Dunkin’ Donuts, Avis, Hertz, Jack in the Box, Dollar, and Blackboard.

Methodology:

The data was collected from an online survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers during January 2014. Quotas were set to mirror the U.S. census data for age, income, gender, ethnicity, and geographic regions of the U.S. population.

Temkin Web Experience Ratings are based on asking consumers the following question about companies with whom they’ve had a customer service interaction during the previous 60 days: “Thinking back to your most recent interaction with the websites of these companies, how satisfied were you with the experience?” Potential responses range from 1= “very dissatisfied” to 7= “very satisfied.” Temkin Web Experience Ratings are calculated by taking the percentages of consumers who respond with a 6 or 7 and subtracting the percentage who respond with 1, 2, or 3.

Download dataset for $295

You can view a sortable list of results from the Temkin Web Experience Ratings as well as other ratings on the Temkin Ratings website.

We recently released the 2014 Temkin Experience Ratings that ranks the customer experience of 268 companies across 19 industries based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

Sam’s Club and Amazon.com continue their reign as the highest-rated retailers for the third straight year, each earning an “excellent” rating. Sam’s Club narrowly beat out Amazon.com for the top spot, receiving an 81% rating and an overall rank of 8th out of 268 companies across 19 industries. With ratings of 79% each, Costco, PetSmart, Ace Hardware, and BJ’s Wholesale Club also earned high marks from customers. At the other end of the spectrum, RadioShack and Foot Locker tied for last place among 45 retailers. This is the fourth straight year that RadioShack has been at the bottom of the industry.

Download entire dataset for $395

Here are some additional findings from the retail industry: Read More …

We just published a Temkin Group report, What Happens After a Good or Bad Experience, 2014. The report, which includes 19 data charts, examines which companies and industries provide the most bad experiences, what impact those experiences have on spending, and how the negative impacts of bad experiences can be mitigated by good service recovery. The report also examines how consumers share their good and bad experiences with companies as well as with other people. Here’s the executive summary:

To understand the effect of good and bad experiences, we asked 10,000 U.S. consumers about their recent interactions with 268 companies across 19 industries. Results show that Internet services and TV services are the industries most likely to deliver a bad experience to their customers, while grocery chains are the least likely to. At the company level, Scottrade had the smallest percentage of customers reporting a recent bad experience with the company and Time Warner Cable had the highest. More than half of the customers who encountered a bad experience at a fast food chain, credit card issuer, grocery store, or hotel either decreased their spending with the company or stopped altogether. However, our data shows that a good service recovery effort can help mitigate a bad experience. Unfortunately, many firms—especially in the banking, Internet services, and TV services sectors—aren’t very good at service recovery. In addition to the consequences of bad interactions, we also examined which channels customers use to share their good and bad experiences and how these changed across age groups. We then compared these results to survey responses from the past two years. We also uncovered a negative bias inherent in how customers provide feedback. ING Direct, Residence Inn, and Fairfield Inn have the most negative bias in the feedback they receive directly from customers, while Hy-Vee and Hyundai have the most negative bias on Facebook.

One of the most interesting analyses in the report is the look at how service recovery after a bad experience affects the spending pattern of consumers. Here’s a summary of one of the charts showing just how important it is for a company to recover well after making a mistake:

Here are some other insights from the research:

Sixteen percent of consumers who have interacted with TV service and Internet service providers report having a bad experience over the previous six months. Next on the list are wireless carriers, with 12% of their customers reporting a bad experience. At the other end of the spectrum, only 3% of consumers report a bad experience with grocery chains and 4% report having a bad experience with fast food chains.

The five companies with the most customers reporting bad experiences are Time Warner Cable (25%), Motel 6 (22%), Coventry Health Care (21%), and Comcast (21%). There were 10 companies with only 1% or less of their customers reporting bad experiences: Scottrade, Chick-fil-A, H.E.B., Whole Foods, ShopRite, ING Direct, Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, Vanguard, and True Value.

More than one-quarter of consumers who have a bad experience stop spending with computer makers, car rental agencies, credit card issuers, hotel chains, and software companies. The impact of bad experiences is less costly for parcel delivery services, wireless carriers, health plans, TV service providers, Internet service providers, and grocery chains, as less than 15% of their customers with bad experience stopped spending.

The industries that are the best at responding to a bad experience are investment firms, major appliances, retailers, and car rental agencies. The industries that are the worst at responding to a bad experience are TV service providers, wireless carriers, Internet service providers, parcel delivery services, and health plans.

Thirty-two percent of consumers give feedback directly to companies after a very bad experience and 23% give feedback after a very good experience.

Overall, 25- to 34-year-olds are the most likely to share feedback about their experiences. After a good experience 57% tell a friend directly, 28% share on Facebook, and 18% put a comment or rating on a review site. After a bad experience, 60% tell a friend directly, 31% share on Facebook, and 20% write a review.

In a recent research report we used Temkin Group’s SLICE-B experience review methodology to evaluate the experience of buying a gift card online from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, CVS, Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks, Target, Walgreens, and Walmart. But those journeys don’t end when the gift card is sent; there’s an important person on the other side of those gifts—the recipient. So, to analyze the entire end-to-end gift-card experience provided by each retailer, we took a look at the experience from the viewpoint of the person who received the gift cards.

While you may have a hard time applying all 50 CX TIps, you should be able to identify several that will work for your organization. I challenge you to select three or more of the CX Tips to implement. Here’s an idea: Have each of your team members pick the five CX Tips that they think would be the most powerful for your organization. Use a team meeting to discuss everyone’s selections and pick the ones you want to implement.

We just released the third annual Temkin Customer Service Ratings of 235 companies across 19 industries based on a study of 10,000 U.S. consumers (see full list of firms).

Download entire dataset for $295

Company Results

Here are some company highlights:

USAA earned the top two spots for its insurance and banking businesses. Other companies at the top of the ratings are credit unions, Ace Hardware, Charles Schwab, Dollar Tree, Chick-fil-A, Sonic Drive-In, Hy-Vee, Costco, Trader Joe’s, Advantage, Publix, and H.E.B.

TV service providers and Internet service providers earned nine out of bottom 10 spots in the ratings.

For the second straight year, Charter Communications took the bottom spot. The rest of the firms in the bottom five are Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Optimum (i/o), and CareFirst.

The following companies earned ratings that were 15 or more points above their industry averages: USAA (insurance and banking), Alaska Airlines, credit unions, Advantage, Kaiser Permanente, TriCare, Charles Schwab, and Bright House Networks.

Five companies earned ratings that were 15 or more points below their industry averages: Apple Stores, US Airways, RadioShack, HSBC, and 21st Century.

On average, credit card issuers, banks and fast food restaurants improved the most while appliance makers, TV service providers and investment firms declined the most.

Calculating the Temkin Customer Service Ratings

During January 2013, Temkin Group asked 10,000 U.S. consumers to identify the companies that they had interacted with on their websites during the previous 60 days. These consumers were asked the following question:

Thinking back to your most recent customer service interaction with these companies, how satisfied were you with the experience?

Responses from 1= “very dissatisfied” to 7= “very satisfied”

For all companies with 100 or more consumer responses, we calculated the “net satisfaction” score. The Temkin Customer Service Ratings are calculated by taking the percentage of consumers that selected either “6” or “7” and subtracting the percentage of consumers that selected either “1,” “2,” or “3.”

Download entire dataset for $295

To see all of the companies in the Temkin Customer Service Ratings as ell as all of our other Temkin Ratings and sort through the results, visit the Temkin Ratings website

The bottom line: TV service providers deliver terrible customer service

As you’ve likely heard, Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post and related media properties for $250 million. You can see some of what Bezos has in mind from his letter to the Washington Post employees. Here’s an excerpt:

“The Internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs. There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment. Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about – government, local leaders, restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports – and working backwards from there.”

My take: I applaud Bezos for making this move. Yes, the newspaper business is going through very tough times, but let’s look at the numbers. Here’s the average amount of time that U.S. consumers spend on different media activities from Temkin Group’s Media Benchmark Study:

U.S. consumers, on average, spent 1.13 hours per day reading newspapers (on paper) in 2012, a number that dropped to .95 hours in 2012. During the same period, reading of news online increased from 1.18 to 1.37 hours. Collectively, U.S. consumers increased the time they spent reading news from 2.31 to 2.32 hours. While newspaper circulations (on paper) may be declining, news consumption is on the rise. It’s fun to think about what Bezos can do with over two hours of a consumer’s day.

So how can Bezos take advantage of this growing appetite for news? By applying Amazon’s online experience design and predictive analytics skills to build around the Washington Post’s core asset, its strong brand and its national/international journalism. Here are some ways that Bezos might Amazon-ize the newspaper experience:

Dynamically personalized newspaper (My News): You can get news feeds from lots of sources today, but they are typically based on static preferences and pre-set search criteria. What about a daily “newspaper” that adapts over time to my needs. An Amazon-ized newsfeed would identify what I’m likely to want to read based on my profile, previous content that I’ve consumed and liked, purchases that I’ve made (including books and other products), my current location, and the content that people like me enjoy reading. If I’m someone who likes to read a daily newspaper, then it can be formatted for on-demand printing from my home.

Suggested reading. If I’m reading a news story and want to read more on the topic, Amazone-ized news can serve up related information from relevant articles, blog posts, and other sources beyond just the Washington Post content. There may even be some books that Amazon might suggest based on the news that I’m interested in reading.

“Give-it-A-Try” content. Online news eliminates some of the random discovery that happens when reading a newspaper, but Amazon-ized news could incorporate that into the online experience by creating a “Give it a Try” type of content that includes articles that aren’t typical for the reader’s preferences.

Democratization of journalists. Good Washington Post journalists will shine, but marginal ones will be set aside as Amazon-ized news will reward the authors who people like to read, whether or not they are Washington Post journalists. Amazon can continue its push to enable self-publishing (as it does in Kindle Direct Publishing and CreateSpace) in the news space, enabling some independent writers to become featured writers in the content if their work seems to be liked by a large number of people or they become very popular with a niche of consumers. (Note: Who knows, maybe Customer Experience Matters will become a popular source for the Washington Post).

Prime bundling: Prime membership includes free two-day shipping and some free streaming movies, so why not include free subscription to some form of the Washington Post content.

Really, really smart marketing. Understanding the content that we consume an the products that we’ve purchased will allow Amazon-ized news to provide very relevant ads, even more tailored than what Google can provide. And Amazon can find ways to embed opportunities to purchase within the content. And, anything that people want to buy is one click away from a final purchase on Amazon.

Kindle News. Amazon can also make the Kindle a prime-time news platform. As more people get comfortable reading their books on Kindles and other mobile/tablet applications, Amazon can dominate the news delivery service. Look for Kindle News Apps on every mobile device you can think about.

What’s next? These changes won’t happen overnight. But what might be on Bezos’ roadmap if he successfully Amazon-izes the newspaper business? Yahoo! If Bezos and company can generate new value from the Washington Post’s reach and brand, think about what can be done by Amazon-ing Yahoo! This $250 million acquisition may just be a small incubator for a much larger strategy to acquire Yahoo! and take on Google. That clash of online titans would be fun to watch and good for consumers who would benefit from an accelerated pace of innovation.

Health Net and RadioShack earned ratings that were 20 points or more less than their industry averages and six other companies were at least 15 points below their peers: 21st Century, American Family, Days Inn, Taco Bell, and Kmart.

Temkin Group examined year-over-year results for the 154 companies that were in the 2012 and 2013 ratings and found that:

Forty-one percent of companies improved, while 53% declined.

Over half of the companies that were in the 2012 and 2013 ratings earned lower scores this year.

Calculating the Temkin Web Experience Ratings

During January 2013, Temkin Group asked 10,000 U.S. consumers to identify the companies that they had interacted with on their websites during the previous 60 days. These consumers were asked the following question:

Thinking back to your most recent interaction with the websites of these companies, how satisfied were you with the experience?

Responses from 1= “very dissatisfied” to 7= “very satisfied”

For all companies with 100 or more consumer responses, we calculated the “net satisfaction” score. The Temkin Web Experience Ratings are calculated by taking the percentage of consumers that selected either “6” or “7” and subtracting the percentage of consumers that selected either “1,” “2,” or “3.”

Download entire dataset for $295

To see all of the companies in the Temkin Trust Ratings as ell as all of our other Temkin Ratings and sort through the results, visit the Temkin Ratings website